kindkit | were the 1950s really that innocent? (Reply)

I've just rewatched Hans Christian Andersen, which is . . . very very gay. Andersen was bisexual-to-gay, although I'm not sure that was known when the film was made in 1952, and anyway the film is almost completely unrelated to the historical Andersen. The film script is by Moss Hart, who was gay. It stars Danny Kaye, who is said to have been mostly gay. It also features Farley Granger, who was bisexual, in a supporting role.

The film has a rather sweet story of Andersen's unrequited heterosexual love for a ballerina, but mostly it's about the mutual, if at one point strained, love between Andersen and his young apprentice (in the movie, Andersen is a village cobbler) Peter. Peter is sufficiently young that even I am hesitant to think of the relationship as sexual--the actor, Joey Walsh, was 14-15 when the film was made, but looks younger. Nevertheless, he's shown as more mature than Hans in many ways, and he looks after Hans rather like a spouse. He's also obviously jealous when Hans becomes infatuated with Doro, the ballerina. So my head canon is that Peter is already in love with Hans, but it'll be a few years yet before anything happens between them. (Must search for fic.)

The film is so deeply homoerotic that I kind of wonder how come no one noticed. Besides the general trend of the story, it also contains an immortal "how did that get past the censors?" moment. Hans is telling the village children the story of the king's new clothes, using a doll as a prop. Previously, the doll had represented a queen. Hans draws a moustache on the doll and says now it's a king.